Anonymous
02/02/2026 18:55
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.
It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.
It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.
I have been saying this forever about Crook-VA, Dollar-Billiam and Mary, and Pickpocket Tech. Rejecting a kid with a 4.0 is ludicrous and should be condemned.
When did Donald Trump join DCUM?
What’s with the grade school playground name calling?
When did Virginia's public colleges start catering to Richie Rich and rejecting qualified students?
UVA has been a Richie Rich school since about the 1700s. It is on a short list of schools that high society kids were expected to attend.
I meant 1800s
Anonymous
02/02/2026 18:54
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.
It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.
It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.
I have been saying this forever about Crook-VA, Dollar-Billiam and Mary, and Pickpocket Tech. Rejecting a kid with a 4.0 is ludicrous and should be condemned.
When did Donald Trump join DCUM?
What’s with the grade school playground name calling?
When did Virginia's public colleges start catering to Richie Rich and rejecting qualified students?
UVA has been a Richie Rich school since about the 1700s. It is on a short list of schools that high society kids were expected to attend.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 18:40
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:UNC is 82% in-state students. If UMD took more in-state kids it would be much easier to get in!
UVA is 60% in-state or something, hence why it was a bloodbath this year with more applicants. They need to actually start serving the state of Virginia properly.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 18:39
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.
It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.
It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.
In Texas, the top 5% high school kids are guaranteed admission to its top public college (UT Austin), but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get into their first choice majors. Other TX colleges (including Texas A&M) will take the top 10% for sure, again to some major not necessarily your first choice. In practice, the top 5-10% of high school kids in Maryland ARE pretty much guaranteed a spot at UMD. I don’t see how imposing such a rule would make any practical difference.
Source? Can you confirm?
I shared the Naviance data from B-CC, and another private school parent shared the data from their school. Both of those affirm that top stats kids are admitted with few outliers.
Do you have evidence this isn’t true? If yes, please provide.
It's an anonymous website lady, Not a scientific journal. Throwing out "where's the evidence" doesn't work here.
If you want data, review the common data set. That's all you'll ever get unless you hack into the UMD admissions software. Which I don't think is going to change the results for your kid. Sorry.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 18:35
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.
It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.
It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.
I have been saying this forever about Crook-VA, Dollar-Billiam and Mary, and Pickpocket Tech. Rejecting a kid with a 4.0 is ludicrous and should be condemned.
So rigor should not be considered?
SAT scores should not be considered?
Easy classes and grade inflation makes for easy 4.0
AOs at UMD know the rigor levels.
The trouble is that a lot of parents think the rigor level at their school is higher than it actually is.
I'm sure that the UMD team has their own algorithm for each school in the state. They just recompute the inflated (or deflated) GPAs and make their decisions.
Even if you make the system 100% transparent, it still won't be "fair" because schools aren't homogeneous.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 15:59
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.
It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.
It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.
In Texas, the top 5% high school kids are guaranteed admission to its top public college (UT Austin), but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get into their first choice majors. Other TX colleges (including Texas A&M) will take the top 10% for sure, again to some major not necessarily your first choice. In practice, the top 5-10% of high school kids in Maryland ARE pretty much guaranteed a spot at UMD. I don’t see how imposing such a rule would make any practical difference.
Source? Can you confirm?
I shared the Naviance data from B-CC, and another private school parent shared the data from their school. Both of those affirm that top stats kids are admitted with few outliers.
Do you have evidence this isn’t true? If yes, please provide.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 15:44
Subject: Re:State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:[b]An auto-admit for top 5% or top 10% from MD high schools to UMD would make it much harder to get in, even in-state. All the kids right at the cusp of that class rank would struggle when they normally would consider UMD a safety. Look at UT Austin, all the non auto-admit in state kids are struggling to get in like never before.
In Texas., that has resulted in some parents moving their kid from a high-performance high school to a low-performance one so their kid could make the percentage cut. Also, some kids in low performance schools make the cut but find themselves in over their head at college. There is no perfect system.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 15:37
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:UNC is 82% in-state students. If UMD took more in-state kids it would be much easier to get in!
It’s been 85% recently
Anonymous
02/02/2026 15:35
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Have your kid go to community college and transfer after a year. Problem solved.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 15:30
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.
It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.
It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.
In Texas, the top 5% high school kids are guaranteed admission to its top public college (UT Austin), but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get into their first choice majors. Other TX colleges (including Texas A&M) will take the top 10% for sure, again to some major not necessarily your first choice. In practice, the top 5-10% of high school kids in Maryland ARE pretty much guaranteed a spot at UMD. I don’t see how imposing such a rule would make any practical difference.
Source? Can you confirm?
If you look at the data from my DC’s private school, there definitely link between GPA and UMD admissions. Over the past 5 years 99% of kids who have a weighted GPA of 4.4 or above were admitted (there were only 2 exceptions). For GPAs that were below 4.4, but pretty close, admission rates became more like 50%. And then there is another GPA point below which no one got in. A 4.4 GPA is probably top 15%.
At my DC’s school though there is real differentiation between students’ GPAs ( ie it’s hard to get an A and teachers aren’t afraid to give Bs and Cs) so its easier for top students to standout. MCPS’s grading policies and grade inflation make it harder to differentiate who the true top students are.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 14:45
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:So, basically OP’s kid had good grades, no material extra-curricular and no story that they could articulate that made them standout from other academic bots. Reasonable summary?
This. We hear variations of this all the time here:
“TO should be banned,” so says the parent of a kid who tested well.
“1580 first try,” so says the parent looking sideways at a super scoring kid.
“1560, top 5% of class, denied/deferred?!??” So says parent of a kid who isn’t well rounded.
“Those ECs are a dime a dozen…they want a kid who can stand out. My kid stood out by x, y, z…” says the parent of a kid with good ECs.
“They should make essays done in person to stop AI use and/or adults helping,” so says parent of a strong writer.
Etc etc etc. everyone wants what helps their kid emphasized and what hurts their kid eliminated.
+1 this is basically the entire thread.
Yeah I knew someone like that. In a nutshell, he wants the world universe to bend over backwards to accommodate every single need of his!
Anonymous
02/02/2026 14:30
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Maryland is already 76%, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference!Anonymous wrote:UNC is 82% in-state students. If UMD took more in-state kids it would be much easier to get in!
Anonymous
02/02/2026 13:56
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
UNC is 82% in-state students. If UMD took more in-state kids it would be much easier to get in!
Anonymous
02/02/2026 13:54
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.
It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.
It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.
In Texas, the top 5% high school kids are guaranteed admission to its top public college (UT Austin), but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get into their first choice majors. Other TX colleges (including Texas A&M) will take the top 10% for sure, again to some major not necessarily your first choice. In practice, the top 5-10% of high school kids in Maryland ARE pretty much guaranteed a spot at UMD. I don’t see how imposing such a rule would make any practical difference.
I was coming to make this exact same point.
I'm not so sure this is true especially related to kids coming from Montgomery County. The kids from MOCO might be in the top 10% statewide but they are not getting in because then MOCO would be overrepresented.
Anonymous
02/02/2026 13:52
Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:“Wholistic” is not a word.
I think you mean “holistic”.
God, thank you. I couldn’t get past that.
NP